Beads and Manhattan

From Peter Francis, Jr. n.d.

New York was until a few years ago, the most populous state in the
Union. Its universities and colleges and produce a lot of
historians. Many are interested in the history of New York. New York
also has a lot of schoolchildren who are required to study state
history. Many textbooks have been written for them.

All the histories and all the textbooks since the mid 1840s have
discussed the acquisition of Manhattan Island, the heart of New York
City, by the Dutch from the Canarsee Delawares. And all of them for
the last century or more (except two) say that beads were used as part
of the trade goods given for the island.

And why not? The early Dutch settlers knew the value of beads. Beads
were common trade items. The Dutch had a glass bead industry at this
time, making beads very like contemporary Venice, because the
beadmakers in Holland were themselves Venetians. However, there is no
proof.

In January 1625 the ship Orange Tree left Amsterdam for New
Netherlands with William Verhulst, who was to become the second
governor of the colony and Peter Minuit, who was to succeed
him. Verhulst had instructions from the merchant group known as the
West India Company, who were financing the building of the colony. The
instructions read in part:

In case any Indian should be living on the aforesaid land or make any
claim upon it or any other places that are of use to us, they must not
be driven away by force or threat, but by good words be persuaded to
leave, or be given something therefor to their satisfaction, or else
be allowed to live among us, a contract being made thereof and signed
by them in their manner, since such contracts upon other occasions
maybe very useful to the Company. [A.J.F. van Laer, trans. 1924
Documents Relating to New Netherlands 1624-1626 In the Huntington
Hartford Library. San Marino CA, pp. 51-2.]

Further instructions were sent out to Verhulst on 22 April 1625
telling him much the same thing and specifically mentioning trade
goods. So, the governor was explicitly instructed to pay something for
the land they were to settle on if need be. Verhulst didn't last
very long and was sent home in disgrace on the Arms of Amsterdam on 23
September 1626. In the meantime, Minuit had become governor and on 11
May 1626 wrote a letter to one of the other colonists instructing him
to buy Manhattan Island, which had not been the colony's first
choice.

When the Arms of Amsterdam arrived in Amsterdam on 4 November with the
embarrassed Verhulst, Peter Schagen, a member of the governing board
of the West India Company, met it. He interviewed the crew and
passengers and gathered information from them about the state of the
colony. On the next day he wrote a letter to the Nineteen, the
governing board of the WIC, which said in part:

They report that our people are in good heart and live in peace there;
the women have also borne some children there. They have purchased the
Island Manhattes from the Indians for the value of 60 guilders;
'tis 11,000 morgens (about 22,00 acres) in
size. [E.B. O'Callaghan, ed. 1856 Documents Relative to the
Colonial History of the State of New York. Albany. Vol. 1, [p. 37.]

Nicolaes Wassenaer also talked to the people returning on the Arms of
Amsterdam and reported what they told him in Historisch Verhael. He
said New Amsterdam (later New York) was a bustling community with a
sawmill and a windmill and plans for the fort laid out. He said
nothing of the purchase of the island.

And there you have it. That is the documentation. That is all that is
historically known about the purchase of Manhattan. The deed is lost,
and there is no copy of it. Shortly after Manhattan was bought on 10
August 1626 Minuit and five other men went to Staten Island and bought
it. That deed is also lost, but was at least partially copied down by
Cornelius Melyen before it disappeared. No glass beads are
mentioned. Shell beads, that is Wampum, were exchanged, not in payment
but as a second sort of deed. The Staten Island inhabitants made their
own wampum, as the Drilling Awls included in the goods given
attest

So where did the beads come in? American scholars didn't know that
Manhattan was purchased until 1846. Harmanus Bleeker, a man from
Albany of Dutch descent was sent as ambassador to the Netherlands by
President Martin Van Buren, another New York Dutchman. Bleeker
discovered a trove of documents on New Netherlands in the Dutch
national archives. In 1839 he persuaded the New York State legislature
to send his secretary, John. R. Brodhead, to go to Amsterdam and copy
the documents. Brodhead returned in 1842 and the documents were
translated and edited by O'Callaghan and published in the work
cited above in 1846. The passage by Peter Schagen was made public.

For the next few decades historians alluded to the purchase of New
York, but it was Martha J. Lamb in History of the City of New York
[1877: New York, Vol. I, p. 104] who first wrote: He [Minuit] then
called together some of the principal Indian chiefs, and offered
beads, buttons, and other trinkets in exchange for their real
estate. They accepted the terms with unfeigned delight, and the
bargain was closed at once. (See accompanying picture.)

I have the feeling that it was actually J.G. Wilson's Memorial
History of the City of New-York in 1892 that was even more influential
on later historians, as the four volume set was considered the basic
work for a long time. He echoed Lamb. In any case, it was all a
product of Lamb's imagination, as was the unfeigned delight
of the natives and the information that the bargain was closed at
once. (See accompanying picture.)

So, you can't believe everything you read.
y
I received the Kerr History Prize in 1986 for The Beads That Did
Not Buy Manhattan Island from the New York State History
Association as the article most significant to New York history for
that year. (And laughed at the journals that turned me down, saying it
was of limited interest.) New York state papers picked up the story,
the Albany Times-Union put it on the wires, CNN announced it and I got
more than Andy's 15 minutes of fame, giving interviews all over
the country and Canada, as well as my first (and thus far only) poison
pen letter.

It has since served as the theme for a display in a Dutch Museum and
has been reprinted in Holland in English and in a Dutch
translation. It has also been reprinted in New York History
again. Since them, a lot more has happened.